Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man. --Fyodor Dostoevsky

10 June 2007

aging...

i don't know why i have been thinking about getting older so much recently, maybe the frequency of birthdays in my vicinity maybe just random... anyway, when i think of getting old, i think of this poem...

When I Am Old.

When I am an old woman I shall wear purpleWith a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me,And I shall spend my pensionon brandy and summer glovesAnd satin sandals,and say we've no money for butter.I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired,And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells,And run my stick along the public railings,And make up for the sobriety of my youth.I shall go out in my slippers in the rainAnd pick the flowers in other people's gardens,And learn to spit.You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat,And eat three pounds of sausages at a go,Or only bread and pickle for a week,And hoard pens and pencils and beer matsand things in boxes.But now we must have clothes that keep us dry,And pay our rent and not swear in the street,And set a good example for the children.We will have friends to dinner and read the papers.But maybe I ought to practice a little now?So people who know meare not too shocked and surprised,When suddenly I am oldand start to wear purple!Jenny Joseph

No comments:

Post a Comment

It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it; and then the warmth and the richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied; and it is all one.